


Regret

by handhellbasket



Category: A Charm of Magpies Series - K. J. Charles
Genre: M/M, No Angst, Religious Guilt, religious themed musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 11:07:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17703218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handhellbasket/pseuds/handhellbasket
Summary: Jonah lies awake and thinks about prices paid





	Regret

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evewithanapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/gifts).



> Happy Valentines!
> 
> Hope this is something like what you're after. I started thinking about Jonah and religion and then stuff came out :)

Ben snuffled and threw an arm over his side sometime after midnight. The storm had finally passed overhead and his lover was sleeping the sleep of the very well ridden. Jonah knew he wouldn’t be getting any sleep himself until the storm was further away still, until he stopped feeling thunder roar beneath his pulse and lightning crackle beneath his skin. It had been a beauty, and he’d spent half the afternoon racing the leading edge along the coast.

They’d started going to church sometimes, lately. Jonah hadn’t been in he couldn’t remember how long (which was even mostly true so long as he kept life before Manchester and Auntie Dot separate to life after. Freedom and servitude divided by a great wall in his head). But Ben liked the routine, liked the normalcy of it. Said it helped them blend in, so Jonah shrugged and went.

That had probably been what started it, all his thinking about his past. About redemption and sin and regret.

Ben thought about it sometimes, he knew. Most people seemed to have this or that they’d change about their pasts if they could. 

He’d been involved in some miserable shit. 

The mess with Lady Bruton ranked highly. The Collinses had been no picnic. 

Leaving Ben in that carriage. Ben going to prison.

Ben hating him.

He laced his fingers through Ben’s and Ben squeezed back without waking.

Jonah didn’t know about redemption. He’d played the hand he’d been dealt same as anyone else. Wasn’t sure there was a god most days to redeem him either, which was another thing that would have sent his parents reaching for a strap.

He wasn’t sure he needed forgiveness of any kind for that.

Sin he had covered too. He was quite literally covered in sin - and was going to have a dead arm in a little while from the solid weight of his lover pressing him into the mattress like this.

Lying quietly in the dark with the man he loved didn’t feel like anything he should apologise for either.

Everything in his life had brought him to now. 

Out from under the Justiciary with Ben pressing sleepy kisses to the back of his neck and mumbling something about gooseberries.

Jonah hummed inquiringly back. Sometimes Ben would say a few more words, enough to get context for his strange late night mutterings. Sometimes he was too far asleep to get any sense out of and the dream would remain a mystery.

This was one of the latter nights. Ben grumbled wordlessly back - sounding like a pissed off cat more than anything else and Jonah grinned to himself and nestled further into his lover’s embrace.

Life with Ben in Hertfordshire had seemed like a dream at the time.

Meeting him in that bar had been a moment of rightness - striking out of the blue like Jonah had his head inside a great church bell.

He’d run from everything else. Everywhere else. 

Never wanted to stop.

Couldn’t have even if he wanted to, it felt like. For all it had seemed so simple when Ben had asked him to.

To give up the thieving and the fear of what might be over his shoulder.

But now, despite everything, Jonah had a man who loved him. A good man, one who made Jonah see the appeal in rooting himself in one little village, in a life pulling pints and tending the bar. Ben knew about his windwalking and his magic. Loved him anyway somehow.

He couldn’t regret anything. 

Wouldn’t change anything.

Not now that it brought him here.

Even the worst parts - even abandoning Ben and knowing deep in his soul that he’d never get him back.

Perhaps that’s what he should be seeking redemption for. For the willingness to trade all the death, and pain, and suffering, and Ben’s horrid scar … 

But they’d come through it.

They’d come through it and found a life and a home better than he ever could have dreamed.

And if there was a god, was some great power watching from higher than even Jonah could reach … perhaps that meant that it was alright.

The price for this happiness had already been paid.


End file.
